Network Recovery Senior Associate

As the global leader in high-speed connectivity, Ciena builds the critical infrastructure powering the AI era. We're a technology company shaping the future of networking, guided by innovation, integrity, and collaboration. Through development opportunities, meaningful work, and flexibility, Ciena supports growth and well-being-on and off the job. Connect with a career that matters.

As the global leader in high-speed connectivity, Ciena builds the critical infrastructure powering the AI era. We're a technology company shaping the future of networking, guided by innovation, integrity, and collaboration. Through development opportunities, meaningful work, and flexibility, Ciena supports growth and well-being-on and off the job. Connect with a career that matters.

As a member of Ciena's Emergency Response Team (ERT), you will play a critical role in restoring customer networks during high-severity incidents involving Ciena's Coherent Packet Optical (CPO) portfolio, including the 6500, RLS, and Waveserver platforms. You will apply your optical networking expertise, analytical troubleshooting skills, and incident management experience to resolve complex network issues, minimize service disruption, and deliver exceptional customer outcomes.

• Drive critical incident recovery: Take ownership of high-severity customer incidents, including Severity 1 and Severity 2 events, and lead troubleshooting efforts to restore services within established recovery objectives.
• Troubleshoot complex optical networks: Investigate and resolve service-impacting issues across optical transport networks, using system alarms, logs, performance data, topology information, and other diagnostic tools to isolate faults and determine recovery actions.
• Restore customer services: Develop and execute structured recovery strategies, assess potential service impacts, and coordinate technical activities to achieve timely and effective service restoration.
• Engage directly with customers: Communicate technical findings, recovery plans, progress updates, and next steps clearly throughout critical incidents, maintaining customer confidence during high-pressure situations.
• Collaborate across technical teams: Work with product engineering, development, global technical support, and other subject matter experts to resolve complex problems and investigate potential product defects.
• Prepare root cause analysis: Develop interim root cause analysis reports, documenting incident timelines, technical findings, recovery actions, contributing factors, and outstanding investigations.
• Maintain technical documentation: Accurately record troubleshooting activities, diagnostic evidence, customer communications, and resolution details to support effective incident management and knowledge sharing.
• Improve recovery effectiveness: Participate in post-incident reviews, lessons learned, knowledge management, and continuous improvement initiatives that strengthen technical readiness and reduce recovery times.

• Optical networking experience: 4+ years of experience in optical transport, telecommunications, network engineering, or technical support for carrier-grade networking equipment.
• Technical troubleshooting: Demonstrated experience diagnosing complex network or service issues in production environments, using alarms, logs, performance metrics, network topology, and other diagnostic information.
• Network recovery: Ability to analyze service-impacting failures, develop effective troubleshooting strategies, and drive restoration activities in environments with stringent availability and recovery requirements.
• Optical transport fundamentals: Strong understanding of optical transport networks and relevant technologies, such as DWDM, coherent optics, wavelength services, optical performance monitoring, or related transport technologies.
• Incident ownership: Ability to manage critical technical issues from initial investigation through service restoration, prioritizing actions and coordinating the appropriate technical resources.
• Customer engagement: Excellent verbal and written communication skills, with the ability to explain complex technical problems, recovery strategies, and incident status to customers and internal stakeholders.
• Technical documentation: Experience documenting technical investigations, troubleshooting procedures, and incident findings. The ability to produce clear, structured…